Lark Rise to Candleford (49 page)

These confidences were all very well, if sometimes boring;
but there were others which filled Laura's thoughts and weighed heavily upon
her. Only one girl in the hamlet had a stepmother, and she was a model
stepmother, according to hamlet standards, for she had no children of her own,
and did not beat or starve her stepchildren. One of Laura's earliest memories
was of the day on which Polly's own mother died. Polly, although a little older
than Laura, could not remember so far back, and Laura must have been a very
small child at the time. She was standing on the doorstep of her home on a
misty morning when she heard a cock crow, very loudly and shrilly, and her
mother, standing close behind her, said: 'At the house where that cock is
crowing a little girl's mammy has died this morning.'

At the time of the school confidences, Polly was an
unattractive-looking little girl, fat and pale, with scanty mouse-coloured
hair, and heavy and clumsy in her movements. She breathed very heavily and had
a way of getting very close to the person to whom she was talking. Laura almost
hated herself for not liking her more; but she was really sorry for her. The
stepmother, so fair-spoken to outsiders, was a tyrant indoors, and the stepchildren's
lives were made miserable by her nagging. Every day—or every day when Polly
could buttonhole Laura—there was some fresh story of persecution to be told and
listened to. 'I know. I know,' Laura would say sympathetically, meaning that
she understood, and Polly would retort, 'No, you don't know. Nobody could but
them as has to put up with her,' and Laura would feel that her heart must break
with the hopeless misery of it all. Her mother found her crying one day after
one of Polly's confidences and demanded to be told the reason. 'Polly's not
happy,' was all Laura could say, for she had sworn never to repeat what Polly had
told her.

'Polly not happy? I dare say not,' said her mother dryly.
'None of us can be happy all the time; but your being unhappy as well doesn't
seem to me to improve matters. It's no good, my girl, you've got to learn you
can't take other people's troubles' upon you. Do anything you can to help them,
by all means, but their troubles are their own and they've got to bear them.
You'll have troubles of your own before you have done, and perhaps by that time
Polly'll be at the top of the tree of happiness. We all have our turn, and it
only weakens us when our turn comes to have always been grieving about things
we couldn't help. So, now, dry your eyes and come in and lay the table for tea
and don't let me catch you crying again.' But Laura only thought her mother
heartless and continued to grieve, until one day it suddenly struck her that it
was only when she was alone with herself that Polly was miserable. When in
company with the other girls she forgot her troubles and was as cheerful as her
nature permitted, and, from that time, she took care to be less often alone
with Polly.

No country child could be unhappy for long together. There
were happy hours spent blackberrying, or picking bluebells or cowslips with a
friend, or sitting in the long meadow grass making daisy or buttercup chains to
be worn on the hair as a crown or as necklaces or girdles. When Laura was too
old (according to others) to wear these herself, they could still be made for
one of the younger children, who would stand, like a little statue, to be hung
from head to foot with flowers, including anklets and earrings.

Sliding on the ice in winter was another joy. Not on the big
slide, which was as smooth as glass and reached the whole length of the pond.
That was for the strong, fighting spirits who could keep up the pace, and when
tripped up themselves would be up in a moment and tripping up the tripper.
Edmund was soon one of the leaders there, but Laura preferred some small
private slide made by herself and a few friends and as near the bank as
possible. How the cheeks glowed and the whole body tingled with warmth and
excitement in the frosty air! And what fun it was to pretend that the arms
stretched out for balance were wings and that the slider was a swallow!

Not such fun for Laura was the time when the ice gave way
under her, and she found herself suddenly plunged into icy water. This was not
the big pond, but a small, deep pool to which she and two other small girls had
gone without asking permission at home. When they saw Laura drowning, as they
thought, her companions ran off screaming for help, and Laura, left alone, was
in danger of being sucked down under the ice; but she was near the bank and
managed to grasp the branch of a bush and pull herself out before she realized
her danger.

As she walked home across the fields her wet clothes froze
upon her, and when she arrived dripping on the doorstep her mother was so cross
that smacks, as well as hot bricks in bed, were administered to warm her. The
wetting did her no harm. She did not even have a cold afterwards, although her
mother had prophesied pneumonia. Another instance, she was told, of the wicked
flourishing like a green bay-tree.

Occasionally, during school hours, something exciting would
happen. Once a year the German band came and the children were marched out into
the playground to listen. The bandsmen gave of their best at the school, for
the mistress not only put a whole shilling in the collecting cap, but gave it
with smiles and thanks and told the children to clap, and they clapped
heartily, as they would have clapped anything which brought them out into the
sunshine for a few minutes. When their shilling programme was finished, before
playing 'God Save the Queen,' the leader asked in his broken English if there
was anything special 'the gracious lady' would like them to play. 'Home, Sweet
Home' was the usual choice, but, one year, the mistress asked for 'When the
Dewy Light was Fading', a Sankey and Moody hymn which had just then taken the
neighbourhood by storm. When the musician shook his head and said, 'Sorry, not
know,' his reputation went down considerably.

Once a grand funeral procession passed and the mistress told
the children they might go out and watch it. It might be their last opportunity
of seeing such a procession, she said, for times were changing and such deep,
very deep mourning was becoming out of date.

It was the time of year when the buttercups were out on the
road-margins and the hedges were white with may, and between them, at a snail's
pace, came swaying a huge black hearse, draped with black velvet and surmounted
at the four corners with bunches of black ostrich plumes. It was drawn by four
coal-black horses with long, flowing tails, and driven and attended by
undertaker's men with melancholy faces and with long black crape streamers
floating from their top hats. Behind it came carriage after carriage of
mourners, spaced out to make the procession as long as possible, and every
carriage was drawn by its own black horse.

It passed slowly between the rows of open-mouthed, wondering
children. There was plenty of time to look at it; but to Laura it did not seem
real. Against the earth's spring loveliness the heavy black procession looked
dream-like, like a great black shadow, Laura thought. And, in spite of the
lavish display of mourning, it did not touch her as the country funerals did
with their farm-wagon hearse and few poor, walking mourners crying into their
handkerchiefs.

But she was so much impressed that she unintentionally
started a rumour by saying that she thought such a grand funeral must be that
of an earl. There was an aged nobleman living in the neighbourhood whose time
must soon come in the course of Nature, and her 'an earl' became 'the earl'
before it had been many times repeated. Fortunately for Laura, the
schoolmistress heard this and corrected it by telling the children that it was
the funeral of a farmer whose family had formerly lived in the parish and had a
family burying place in the churchyard. Such a man would now be carried to his
last resting-place in one of his own farm wagons and be followed by his near
relatives in a couple of cars.

Then there was the day of the General Election, when little
school work was done because the children could hear bands of voters passing
beneath the school windows and shouts of 'Maclean! Maclean for Freedom!
Maclean! Maclean! He be the boy for the farm labourer!' and they wished their
schoolroom had been chosen for the polling station instead of the schoolroom in
the next village. There was an uneasy feeling, too, because they knew their
fathers were voting Liberal, and the mistress was wearing a bright blue
rosette, the Conservative colour, which proclaimed her one with the Rectory and
the Manor House, and against the villagers. The children were forbidden to wear
the deep crimson which stood for the Liberal cause, but most of them carried a
scrap of red in their pockets to wear going home and two or three of the more
daring girls sported a red hair ribbon. The mistress was at liberty, too, to
look out of the window, which they were not, and she made the most of this
advantage, tiptoeing to open or shut it or arrange the blind whenever voices
were heard. On one of these occasions she looked round at her scholars and
said: 'Here, now, are two respectable men going quietly to vote; and as you may
guess they are voting for law and order. It's a pity more in this parish are
not like Mr. Price and Mr. Hickman' (the parson's factotum and the squire's
gardener). At that, faces flared up and mouths grew sulky-looking, for the more
intelligent took it as a reflection on their own fathers; but all such
resentment was wiped out when she said at three o'clock: 'I think we had better
dismiss now. You had better get home early, as it is Election Day.' Although it
was a pity she added 'there may be drunken men about'.

But the most memorable day for Laura was that on which the
Bishop came to consecrate an extension of the churchyard and walked round it in
his big lawn sleeves, with a cross carried before him and a book in his hands,
and the clergy of the district following. The schoolchildren, wearing their
best clothes, were drawn up to watch. 'It makes a nice change from school,'
somebody said, but to Laura the ceremony was but a prelude.

For some reason she had lingered after the other children had
gone home, and the schoolmistress, who, after all, had not been invited to the
Rectory to tea as she had hoped, took her round the church and told her all she
knew of its history and architecture, then took her home to tea.

A small, two-roomed cottage adjoining the school was provided
for the schoolmistress, and this the school managers had furnished in the
manner, they thought suitable for one of her degree. 'Very comfortable,' they
had stated in their advertisement; but to a new tenant it must have looked
bare. The downstairs room had a deal table for meals, four cane-bottomed chairs
of the type until recently seen in bedrooms, a white marble-topped sideboard
stood for luxury and a wicker armchair by the hearth for comfort. The tiled
floor was partly covered with brown matting.

But Miss Shepherd was 'artistic' and by the time Laura saw
the room a transformation had taken place. A green art serge cloth with bobble
fringe hid the nakedness of the deal centre table; the backs of the cane chairs
were draped with white crocheted lace, tied with blue bows, and the wicker
chair was cushioned and antimacassared. The walls were so crowded with
pictures, photographs, Japanese fans, wool-work letter-racks, hanging pincushions,
and other trophies of the present tenant's skill that, as the children used to
say: 'You couldn't so much as stick a pin in.'

'Don't you think I've made it nice and cosy, dear?' said Miss
Shepherd, after Laura had been shown and duly admired each specimen of her
handiwork, and Laura agreed heartily, for it seemed to her the very height of
elegance.

It was her first invitation to grown-up tea, with biscuits
and jam—not spread on her bread for her, as at home, but spooned on to her
plate by herself and spread exactly as she had seen her father spread his.
After tea, Miss Shepherd played the harmonium and showed Laura her photographs
and books, finally presenting her with one called
Ministering Children
and walking part of the way home with her. How thrilled Laura was when, at
their parting, she said: 'Well, I think we have had quite a nice little time,
after all, Laura.'

But, at the time of that tea-drinking, Laura must have been
eleven or twelve, one of Miss Shepherd's 'big girls' and no longer an object of
persecution. By that time the play was becoming less rough and bullying rarer,
for the older children of her early schooldays had left school and none who
came after were quite so belligerent. Civilization was beginning to tame them.

But, even in her earlier days, her life was easier after
Edmund began school, for he was better-liked than she was; moreover, he could
fight, and, unlike most of the other boys, he was not ashamed to be seen with
his sister.

Often, on their way to school, Laura and he would take a
field path which led part of the way by a brook backed by a pinewood where
wood-pigeons cooed. By leaping the little stream, they could visit 'the
graves'. These were two, side by side, in the deepest shade of the pines, and
the headstones said: 'In Memory of Rufus' and 'In Memory of Bess'. They both
knew very well that Rufus and Bess had been favourite hunters of a former owner
of the estate; but they preferred to think of them as human beings—lovers,
perhaps, who in life had been used to meet in that deep, mysterious gloom.

On other days they would scramble down the bank of the brook
to pick watercress or forget-me-nots, or to build a dam, or to fish for minnows
with their fingers. But, very often, they would pass along the bank without
seeing anything, they would be so busy discussing some book they had read. They
were voracious readers, although their books were few and not selected, but
came to them by chance. There were the books from the school library, which,
though better than nothing to read, made little impression upon them, for they
were all of the goody-goody, Sunday-school prize type. But their father had a
few books and others were lent to them, and amongst these were a few of the
Waverley Novels.
The Bride of Lammermoor
was one of the first books
Laura read with absorbed interest. She adored the Master of Ravenswood, his
dark, haughty beauty, his flowing cloak and his sword, his ruined castle, set
high on its crag by the sea, and his faithful servant Caleb and the amusing
shifts he made to conceal his master's poverty. She read and re-read
The
Bride
and dipped into it betweenwhiles, until the heathery hills and moors
of Scotland became as real to her as her fiat native fields, and the lords and
ladies and soldiers and witches and old retainers as familiar as the sober
labouring people who were her actual neighbours.